Frustration
by ToonYoungster
Summary: Because being Jessie's pokémon is never easy. - Jessie/Pumpkaboo.


**notes **\- I do not own Pokémon, TPCi, or any of its properties, obviously. This is just a little character piece meant to entertain the masses. Enjoy!

* * *

~ **Frustration** ~

I'm a fairly simple girl, really. My day usually consists of sucking up nutrients, taking naps in the dirt, and moving the occasional soul to its proper place of deliverance. I'm a pumpkaboo. It's what I do.

On that particular day, I was right in the middle of my afternoon nap when something hard knocked against my ears - for future reference, _never_ grab a pumpkaboo by the ears, it hurts like hoopa - and was forcibly awakened.

I rose from by dirt bed, kind of pissed at whoever woke me up. By defensive reflex, I flashed my lights and identified what appeared to be a pair of male and female humans, a wobbuffet, and an inkay. They started talking, but I was too disoriented to make out any words.

The female human with elongated fur suddenly threw some metal ball at me, and I was caught too off guard to resist.

And just like that, I had a master.

* * *

No sooner after I was captured was I thrown into my first battle. Like any good pokémon, I cried out and flashed my lights to signal that I was ready to fight.

Oh, and apparently we have a talking cat - a meowth, was it? - on this team.

My master gave out the orders, and I carried them out with ease. Things were looking pretty good for us once I had everyone trapped in my Leech Seed. I was a little perplexed at this style of battling as I don't usually use this move on more than one pokémon at a time, but who was I to argue with my master?

Sadly, I had failed our team as that mammoth of a pangoro punched us with enough force to send us hurtling into the stratosphere, effectively ending the match.

I wonder if this is typical for a trainer's pokémon.

* * *

It didn't take me that long to get familiar with the rest of the gang.

My master's name was Jessie, and her partner/mate was named James. She had another pokémon - the wobbuffet - that I recognized, and the inkay belonged to the male. I wasn't sure who the talking meowth belonged to, and when I asked, he threw a fit.

"I'm my own pokémon!" is what he declared.

I also realized fairly quickly that this was not an ordinary group of trainers.

They were thieves. Collectively, they were known as Team Rocket, a criminal syndicate of humans whose purpose was to steal and exploit rare pokémon for profit. Their leader was a human man named Giovanni, and this group that I was now a part of were this man's subordinates.

My new team gave a more grandiose impression, but that's the idea I got.

So by force of capture, I was now a thief. Naturally, I wasn't too keen on stealing my own kind for the goals of an evil organization, but what could I do? I was now owned by a human, and whatever she wanted, I had to deliver. Or at least try to.

I glanced over to my new masters who were now arguing over a slice of dry bread before the inkay swallowed it up. The wobbuffet laughed.

Maybe my preconceptions of evil humans were a little inaccurate.

* * *

I had assumed that we'd be trying to steal really rare species of pokémon. You know, like zygardes or diancies.

Instead, we spent every waking moment trying to steal a kid's pikachu.

I had come to this realization after our latest failure - the 'blast off' as we so called it - had resulted in us getting tangled in a giant oak tree.

After we had managed to get ourselves down, the rest of the night was spent complaining over a pitiful fire, fighting over tasteless biscuits, and sleeping our troubles away.

Needless to say, our next kidnapping attempt inside a dilapidated mansion was a complete failure.

Are humans always so stubborn?

* * *

My masters are in denial.

I don't say this out loud, of course. As my master's pokémon, I cannot do so, but the sentiment is very real. We were busy recovering from our run-in with a malamar bent on world domination (don't ask) when my master started complaining.

"If you even _think_ of evolving that thing, James, so help me…" she threatened.

"With our success rate, that's not going to happen anytime soon." James lamented.

"Now what kinda attitude is dat?" Meowth jumped as if to make himself taller. "We need'ta use dis experience for when we swipe Pikachu!"

My master scoffed. "And how do you suggest we do that?"

Meowth rested his chin on his paw like an evil genius.

'"Hypnotism." he said. "If we can hypnotize da twerps into doin' our biddin', Pikachu will be as good as ours!"

The three of them cheered at this prospect, complete with fist-pumping and an improv rhyme to boot. They marched up the path in high spirits, as only they can.

I sighed and levitated over to Inkay, who seemed to be in his own little world.

"Are you okay with all this?" I asked. "Our masters aren't very capable trainers. Or humans for that matter."

"Whatever." He shrugged his, uh, tentacles. "We get free food out of it, don't we?"

I wasn't going to get anywhere with him.

* * *

Another day, another failure.

We had just survived another one of our blast offs, and honestly, I was getting pretty sick of it. The first few times we're disheartening, but now they were simply aggravating.

James and Meowth were left tending to the ugliness that was our balloon (how it managed to survive for so long is anybody's guess). Meanwhile, my master and I were given the task of rummaging the forest for some lunch.

That's another thing. I'm perpetually hungry. From what I understand, masters are supposed to provide their pokémon with nourishment, but very rarely was I given a decent meal. Granted, I could always eat up nutrients out of the dirt, so I never starved, but even a grass-type likes to eat real food now and again.

"Now _that_ looks scrumptious!"

My master pointed up at a large tree where a large apple hanged from a branch.

"Pumpkaboo, dear, fetch that for me will you?"

I sighed and did as ordered. I wasn't too fond of the way my master called me 'dear'. It was a little too cutesy for my taste, but I wasn't in any position to complain.

The second I floated up there, I was met face to face with a vicious beedrill.

It bared its stingers threateningly, and my master and I took off as fast as we could back to our temporary campsite.

When we arrived, the beedrill was still chasing after us (not to generalize, but I think beedrills have this ridiculous instinct to attack anything that moves). By the time James and Meowth realized what was happening, we were all high-tailing it out of there.

So the four of us - no five, wobbuffet at some point had released himself - were forced into the dense forest with a psychotic beedrill at our heads.

"Pumpkaboo, do something!" my master wailed.

I'm not sure what came over me. Perhaps it was the fight-or-flight response, or maybe it was just all the shit I've had to deal with since my capture, but I've simply had it. Had it up to here with losing, never having anything to eat, always having to follow my master's incompetent battle strategies.

I've. Had. Enough.

I charged up to the infernal insect like an idiot. My mind was clouded too much for me to even realize what I was doing. Every inch of my body was red with anger, and before I knew it, I had slammed right into the beedrill's torso.

The giant bee tumbled backwards from the attack and finally dashed off into the clearing.

My masters had stopped running and were now catching their breaths. They were all giving me surprised looks, and to be fair, I'd probably done the same.

"Now what in the world was that?" my master wondered.

"Let's see," James said, and he pulled out that handheld device that seemed to know more than they did.

"Frustration," he read. "A physical attack that deals more damage the more the pokémon dislikes its trainer."

Well, that made sense. I was more frustrated than I've ever been my entire life, so the fact that I had learned such an appropriately named move was not at all surprising.

"Is that so?" My master crossed her arms and stared at me. She appeared to be deep in thought, and this whole crossing-the-arms thing was her way of showing it. But's that's not what concerned me.

There was no mistaking the hint of sadness in her voice.

* * *

My master decided to test my new attack in a battle against Thetwerps.

She had ordered me (in the most horrendous attire I had ever seen) to use Frustration on Thetwerpette's fennekin. I charged in just as I did against the beedrill, but the fox blew me away with Flamethrower before I could make contact.

One Thunderbolt later, we were blasting off again.

That was the last time I ever used Frustration.

* * *

"Eat up."

I stared at the handful of pellets that my master had presented me with, not sure what to make of it. It wasn't typical of her to directly feed me. Usually she just left them on the ground for me to pick up on my own.

"My arm's getting tired." she grumbled.

I realized my master was getting annoyed with me, and immediately gobbled up the man-made pokémon food. As expected, they were not good. They were stale, flavorless, and had poor constitution. They were probably bought cheaply at that - what's it called - "market" we passed earlier this morning.

Yet somehow, they tasted better than usual.

My master walked back to her partners who were gathered around a tree stump, planning their next scheme. It dawned on me that it was now lunchtime, yet my masters had not eaten, despite having the appetite of snorlaxes.

I decided to float over to Wobbuffet, who was chowing down on his own share of pellets.

"Hey," I nudged him. "Why aren't our masters eating?"

"_Wobbuffet!_" he exclaimed. "No money, so no food."

"I see." I glanced back to our hungry masters before turning back to the blob. "Can I ask you something."

"_Wobbuffet!_"

I'll take that as a yes.

"How come master never orders me to use Frustration anymore?" He continued eating as I talked. "It's been quite some time since I last used it."

"_Wobba Wobba!_" He swallowed his meal and gave me a salute. "Jessie doesn't like that move."

I'll never get used to how informal Wobbuffet is when addressing our master. Then again, he has been on her team the longest, so it makes sense that he'd earned the privilege. I don't know if I'll ever earn that myself.

"Why not?" I inquired.

"_Wobbuffet!_" He squirmed around as he spoke. "Jessie doesn't like you not liking her. Jessie wants her pokémon to like her."

Now that was surprising. My master has always been pretty vocal about the things she did or did not like. But not once do I recall her speaking about me in such a way. Or maybe she didn't say anything, and Wobbuffet had figured it out on his own. He _was_ a psychic-type after all.

"She thinks I don't like her?"

Wobbuffet gave me a funny look.

"_Do_ you not like her?" he asked.

I averted my gaze to my master, who was using Meowth's charm as a mirror to apply that red stuff on her lips.

"Not as much as I did."

* * *

To be fair, trying to capture a Salamence by putting it to sleep with a hypnosis device was not the _worst_ idea they've conceived.

But if the Hyper Beam-induced injuries are any indication, it was one of the most painful.

I woke up groggy and in a bit of pain. The sky above me was passing by incredibly fast and I realized I was being moved not of my own free will. I struggled to escape, but for some reason I was strapped in place. And are those bandages?

"Hurry before they see us, James!"

"My legs are about to give!"

I recognized the bickering as my master and James. Whoever was moving me suddenly went uphill, and I could see my master pushing whatever vehicle I was on away from what appeared to be a pokémon center.

We finally stopped behind a line of shrubs, no doubt to conceal ourselves. My master looked back to see James struggling to reach us, but she didn't seem to care.

She removed her cap and glasses, though I question in what universe those would be a sufficient disguise.

"Are you alright, Pumpkaboo, dear?" She seemed...surprisingly concerned.

I made a noise to signal that I was indeed alright. In the background, I could hear Meowth's cries of revived consciousness, but I ignored it for what I was currently beholding.

My master was smiling down at me. And her eyes radiated more love and concern than I've ever seen from her.

I smiled back.

* * *

Sometimes I think my masters are more pokémon than human.

They were always scrounging around for food instead of doing what other humans called "cooking". Half the time, we were preying on pokémon, and the other half, _we_ were the prey. Unlike most humans, who used "sleeping bags' to rest themselves in, we were always moving around for shelter when the meowth balloon was not functional.

Tonight's sleeping quarters was a bunch of recreational mechanisms that James identified as the "local park". It didn't look especially comfortable.

James curled up by a park bench with Inkay resting on top of his head.

Meowth had taking refuge in a large tire swing.

As for my master, Wobbuffet, and myself, we slipped inside a pair of playground slides.

"Goodnight, Wobbuffet." my master yawned.

The blue blob gurgled incomprehensibly before drifting off to sleep.

"Sweet dreams, dear Pumpkaboo."

I could feel my master wrap her arms around me as she caved to the sleepiness. Her gloves are surprisingly warm despite being made of rubber, and the heat of her breath made me even more toasty warm.

Now I'm not a nocturnal pokémon, but pumpkaboo are generally more active at night. Thus, I've had to adjust my body clock to compensate for my master's sleep schedule.

It was just one of the things that I was forced to change about myself after I've gotten captured. My life as a simple wild pumpkaboo was no more. I was now an indentured pokémon thief and I had the loudest, reddest, most aggravating trainer to go along with it.

My master unconsciously petted my center. My favorite spot.

But she's trying, so I should too.

I chirped in exhaustion and sunk deeper into her embrace. Her cheek was resting against mine. I let myself cuddle her face before falling into my nightly slumber.

"Goodnight, Jessie."


End file.
